http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZOW3exjU8QHis extra marital affairs & chemical abuse had given her all the sympathy, but his autobiography and this SNL appearance sort of reminded people of his accomplishments and it was even liberating in this "Untouchables" skit, freeing him, where Lucy/Gilda is machine gunned. I realize that sounds wrong. I saw this episode LIVE (when it aired), on t.v. that is, and somebody in the room yelled out, "There it IS!1" It's BELUSI, as "Rico," who kills Lucy. It would have been TOO far for Desi to have done the shooting.
In the scene where Lucy/Gilda does the "Wahhhhhh" - her reason is, "They gunned down Fred and Ethel!1" and NITTI/Desi says, "It's about time!1"
The summaries of the episode make it all sound ground breaking. Watching the video this many years later, I see it really plodding and dated.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desi_ArnazTo promote his autobiography, A Book, Arnaz, on February 21, 1976, served as a guest host on Saturday Night Live, with his son, Desi, Jr., also appearing. The program contained
spoofs of I Love Lucy and The Untouchables. The spoofs of I Love Lucy were supposed earlier concepts of the show that never made it on the air. They were "I Love Louie", where Desi lived with Louis Armstrong,
"I Loathe Lucy", where Desi was a wife beater, and "I Love Desi", where Desi was married to a clone of himself. He also read Lewis Carroll's poem "Jabberwocky" in a heavy Cuban accent (he pronounced it "Habberwocky"). Arnaz, Jr. played the drums and, supported by the SNL band, Desi sang both "Babalu" and another favorite from his dance band days, "Cuban Pete"; the arrangements similar to the ones used on I Love Lucy. He ended the broadcast by leading the entire cast in a raucous conga line through the SNL studio.
http://tviv.org/Saturday_Night_Live/Desi_ArnazThe Untouchables: Arnaz Jr. prefaces the sketch by saying his parents' production company, Desilu Productions, was responsible for several classic television shows. He says Arnaz Sr. was personally involved with many of those shows, but he never guest starred
on The Untouchables, "until tonight." In the sketch, Arnaz Sr. plays Raoul Nitti, an amphetamines dealer in 1920s Chicago. He does not know he is being watched by Eliot Ness (Aykroyd) and his partners Rico (Belushi) and Youngblood (Arnaz Jr.). They trail Nitti to a restaurant, where he and his henchmen rough up the owner (Morris). When the owner says he cannot pay, Nitti's man Andrew (Chase) asks a patron (Newman) if she likes her meal. When she complains, he shoots and kills her. As Nitti leaves to make a phone call, the other patrons (O'Donoghue, et al.) say they're satisfied. On the phone, Nitti talks to "Lucy" and asks her to bring his gun. Ness watches the restaurant from a "kitchen of the future," a modern-day kitchen set. Back at the warehouse,
Lucy Ricardo (Radner) brings the gun, but she whines and complains, "They knocked off Fred and Ethel." At the stakeout, Ness and the Untouchables prepare to raid Nitti's operation, but first they synchronize their watches, and as they do, they hear the announcer, Walter Winchell (Coe) tell them what time it is. Inside the warehouse, Nitti shows Lucy how he hides the drugs inside his drums. Ness enters in disguise, but Nitti and his henchmen recognize him. Nitti tries to shoot Ness, but Lucy has brought him the gun loaded with blanks. Ness calls for the other Untouchables, but Winchell says they are coming up the back way, and Nitti and his men hear this. Nonetheless, the Untouchables raid the place before Nitti's crew can escape, although
Rico guns down Lucy. Winchell starts to say how Nitti will escape prison, so the Untouchables pull aside crates to find Winchell, and they kill him.
Hip Old Man: Desi Arnaz is the first of four influential icons from the Golden Age of Television to host the show. In the 1970s, most masterminds of television's past expressed confusion and bewilderment—even outrage—at the then-groundbreaking show, but Arnaz Sr. claims to be a fan in his opening monologue, and the zeal with which he fully commits to the sketches and musical numbers, even with the show's irreverent and subversive style of comedy, suggest the sentiment is probably genuine. Arnas Sr. even makes a drug joke in his monologue (something considered outrageous on network TV in the mid-1970s) and
plays along with sketches which portray his beloved ex-wife Lucille Ball being abused or murdered. Given Arnaz Sr.'s history of being an extraordinarily influential and cutting-edge TV producer well into the 1960s, it may very well be true that he remained a TV visionary into the early SNL era, at least moreso than others of his generation, and as a result may have been better equipped than others to understand Lorne Michaels' vision
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